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I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.'

Mohsin Hamid

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Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Always
Second
Sharks
Think
Playing
Imaginary
Thinking
Growing
Worlds
Interacted
World
Friends
Usual
Fins
Character
Drawn
Lawn
Persons
Boat
Bench
Person
Leaves
Benches
Way
Characters
Lawns

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I am not much of a researcher as a novelist I write mainly from experience.
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If we want things to be okay, we will have to make things okay.
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For me, language is about the impossibility of communicating what we precisely wish to communicate and this gorgeous attempt that we make to do that anyway. I love that we will never say exactly what we mean, but we will forever keep trying.
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If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.
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Television has given Pakistan a truly open national forum for the first time in its history. Ideas are debated, leaders are assessed and criticised, and a nation of 170 million people is finally discovering, together, what it thinks.
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For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the US as a geopolitical player.
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